Film review: 'Diving' viewers see world through one eye

Rob Thomas  —  1/17/2008 10:58 am

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY Rating: 3 1/2 out of 4 stars. Rated: PG-13 for nudity, sexual content, language. Stars: Mathieu Almaric, Emmanuelle Seigner. Length: 1:52. Where: Sundance

For a while, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" looks like the strangest IMAX 3-D movie ever made. You know those IMAX first-person movies that make the viewer feel like he's a NASCAR race car driver or an undersea diver? Well, "Diving Bell" simulates the experience of being a massive stroke victim who can only move his left eyelid. Get the special glasses and pass the popcorn!

In fact, the movie is much less depressing and constraining than that description might suggest. Director and artist Julien Schabel ("Before Night Falls") has taken the true-life story of Jean-Dominique Bauby and crafted a visually resplendent and humane film that transcends the usual against-the-odds cliches. We never sympathize with Bauby, because, for much of the film, we are him.

For the first 45 minutes or so, the camera seems to be fixed behind the woozy left eye of Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), a successful editor for the French edition of Elle who suffered a "cerebralvascular" episode that rendered him completely immobile, save for that one eye that he can blink. But inside that prison of a body, Bauby is fully aware and alert, which is why doctors call his condition "locked-in syndrome."

Schabel lets us see exactly and only what Bauby sees, as he sees it. Doctors and loved ones loom into the camera as they inspect Bauby, the screen goes blurry and out of focus as his eye waters, and when Bauby blinks, the screen goes briefly dark. We can hear Bauby's internal thoughts as well, so we're not totally isolated.

It's a showy, arty technique, to be sure, but it's important as well as impressive, creating a visual language for Bauby's condition that really makes us feel like we're locked in with him. Bauby likens his condition to being a diver in a diving bell, unable to signal to those on the surface, but the other obvious simile that comes to mind is that he's like a moviegoer, able to watch but unable to influence the images he sees.

At least, until a determined and caring speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze) devises a clever way for Bauby to use his blinking to communicate, one painstaking letter at a time. It should be agonizing to watch Bauby take two minutes to spell out "Thank you." Instead, after being locked in his prison with him for so long, it's exhilarating to see him communicate again.

As Bauby blinks out his 1997 memoir that bears the film's title, Schabel marvelously dives deep into Bauby's mind for memories (the "butterflies"), rapturously beautiful sequences that both sustain and torment Bauby. A visual artist, Schabel may have come to movies late in his career, but he does so as a lover of cinema, and it shows in what he's created here.

"Diving Bell" avoids nearly all the usual themes about a man who uses a life-changing condition to take stock of his life; this isn't "Regarding Henri," and Jean-Dominique's feelings about his condition (so poignantly conveyed by Almaric) are complex and volatile. His ex-wife (Emmanuelle Seigner) dotes on him in the hospital, but he still pines for his mistress, and there are two scenes between Jean-Dominique and his father (Max Von Sydow) that are deeply felt.

In the end, this isn't a film about a man who fixes his life, or battles back to a full recovery. Instead, it's about a man who was nearly severed from his life but for one delicate thread. That thread allowed him to look at his life in a different, removed way, and the movie invites us to do the same.

Rob Thomas  —  1/17/2008 10:58 am